256
by connora
Summary: It was approximately 256 steps to the bottom of the stairs once you left my room. From there, you could see the front door.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. The world of Harry Potter belongs entirely to JK Rowling ©. No copyright infringement is intended.

Fighting was common to hear from my wall, you see. It was approximately 256 steps to the bottom of the stairs once you left my room. From there, you could see the front door. I only know it to be so exact because I've counted them so many times before. I can tell you where each creak in each floor board is, where the rug curls up and can trip you, where the tables in the hallway are located so that you don't bump into them at night.

For years now, I've been taking those 256 steps carefully to listen to my parents. Not to catch a glimpse of what they might be getting me for my birthday or to try and pin point the differences in the boxes under the tree for Christmas. No. I only wish my feet had taken me there for more appealing reasons.

My parents hate my brother, you see. Loathe him. Have ever since he was eleven. They never spoke it aloud until recently. The Blacks are ruthless, but they make attempts. But my brother had a mind of his own, and they hated that. He didn't do everything they asked him to and put up a fight when they said otherwise. I admired him for this. But it puts me in a difficult situation.

Whenever my brother disobeyed my parents, I was rewarded, because they made the assumption that I would have done whatever it was they wanted him to do. I was too young to really understand what they were talking about at the time, but I knew it was important and that it would probably carry over into my adult life. And it did.

Some families throw around terms to describe their sons such as _golden boys_, _two peas in a pod _and other variations that depict both sons in a positive light. Not my parents. Instead, they gave birth to _the hier and the spare._

When I took those careful, painful 256 steps to the bottom of my stairs, I often heard them talk about my brother. That _something had to be done about him_. _He wasn't part of this family_. It was a shock for me to discover that he had followed me downstairs on several of these occasions and heard our parents talk about him like he wasn't human, like he was a dog.

We used to to be close, my brother and I. We pretended to save the world from danger and make things right. It was our escape from reality.

When my parents sat my brother and I down and told us about Him, I thought He was incredible. My brother ... not so much. He had a lot of questions and not many of them were answered. That night before bed, I reminded my brother about the games we played in our youth. _It would be like we're really saving the world!_ I had said._ I don't think so, Reg_ he replied.

That's when things got bad. The day he left for school was the day I realized that I would be left alone. Things were changing between us, and we didn't even know it. When he was put into Gryffindor, I remember my mother crying. It didn't make a lot of sense. What difference did it make what house he was in?

He wrote me, you know. You probably didn't know that, but he did. He wrote me letters and told me about his professors and how much I was going to like it and who his friends were and who Nearly Headless Nick was and why he was nearly headless. He loved Quidditch and couldn't wait to go out for the team, for us to play together. And neither could I.

The following year, I was sorted into Slytherin and I was surprised. My brother and I were so much alike, but we weren't together. Mum and dad were so proud. But not my brother. We had barely been in school together for an hour and already, a wedge was being driven between us.

Suddenly, the letters from Mum and Dad suggested that my brother was a screw up, that I was the one to depend on. I suppose I let it get the best of me, because after that, I stopped saying hello to him in the halls.

The summer after my second year was when things took another turn for the worse. He would disappear for days at a time. I often asked him why he didn't just do as he was told. _Because they're wrong_ was what he would say. I never wholly understood it. They were my parents - they had to be right. My brother was troubled, my parents would say. He didn't know what he wanted. Who was I to question them?

I was 15 when he left home for good. He and our parents had just had a good row. I didn't even need to sneak the 256 steps to the bottom of the stairs to hear them yelling. It's one thing for your parents to be yelling at you for something you've done wrong, but it's another when you hear your parents yelling at your brother for not being more like you. That's what hurt the most, I think. The comparison.

As soon as I heard his footsteps coming up the stairs, I bolted to his room. He was packing - that was evident. The only reason I knew it was for good this time was because he was taking actual belongings. The one thing I remember about what he shoved into his satchel was a photo of myself and him when we were younger.

He should have hated me after everything I did to him, or what I didn't do. I never took his side, even when I had a feeling he was right. I let our parents tell him that he was worthless, that he didn't matter to this family. In school, I would make fun of him along with my friends, knowing the he could hear us. I would see the look on his face when he saw me laughing along with the rest of the Slytherins. He should have hated me for that. But for some reason, he didn't. At least, not yet.

_Where you're going?_ I had asked in the doorway to his room.

_Why? Do you plan on sending me post?_ was his answer. He was always sarcastic when he was angry, that was something I would always remember. He had sighed heavily and turned to face me. _It doesn't matter, I'm not coming back._

I knew that he didn't want to tell me because he thought I was a nark. He had a reason to believe that. I ratted him out for almost everything. The muggle comic books that he had years ago, the letters from his friends, the article from the _Daily Prophet_ that had talked about a "Dark Army." But I wasn't asking because I wanted to be rewarded again. I was asking because I wanted to know where he was going. Where he was going without me.

_I won't tell them._ I had said with as much honesty as I could. I didn't think he would believe me, and who could blame him if he didn't. When had I ever given him a reason to? I had just hoped that maybe he remembered me as his brother, instead of his rival.

_James'._ he said finally and I nodded. James Potter was more of a brother to him than I ever would be and even he knew that. I didn't try to stop him, because part of me wanted him to leave. I knew that there was something more for him, something better. It wouldn't occur to me for nearly a year that we were on opposite sides of the war. That at some point, we would face each other again but this time, it would be at wandpoint.

We didn't say goodbye to each other, because that wasn't what it was, not really. I like to think that it pained him to say goodbye to his brother, because that's how it felt for me. Instead, we had said goodnight, and left it at that.

After he had left, my mother blasted his face off the Black family tree. I remembered the satisfactory smile on her lips when she did it and how much it burned me on the inside. She had smiled at me after that as if to say _you're the only one that matters._ I should have felt special, but I didn't.

That night, I took the 256 steps to the bottom of the stairs and sat there with my eyes focused on the door. Call me a fool, but I actually thought he'd be back. I had hoped that maybe he would have forgotten something and come back to get it. That maybe he had changed his mind. Despite my wishful thinking, I knew that he was gone for good. That nothing would bring him back, not even a brother who had planned on saying he was sorry.

Before I knew what the war really meant, what my brother and I were really up against, before I knew that I was letting my parents sign my life away, I learned to say goodnight as if it were goodbye.

Don't feel pity for me, because I don't. I'm not proud of where I've landed myself, but it's too late to go back, much like it's too late to tell my brother that I miss him. Because I do.

I can't explain how I feel about my brother, but I do know that I'll always love him - it's just something I can't change. Before any of this had happened, he was there. He taught me how to tie my shoes and had helped me dress myself and did all of the things that an older brother was supposed to do. But me .. I didn't do anything of the things that a younger brother was supposed to do. I didn't support him, I didn't stick up for him but most importantly, **I didn't stand beside him.**

I'm sixteen years old, on the brink of a war, ready to kill innocent people on behalf of a man that I've only spoken with once or twice. I'm still a child. And the only thing I want is to have my brother, Sirius, back into my life.


End file.
